TAXODIUM DISTICHUM. 285 



sad grey hairs are either hanging listlessly or swinging mournfully in 

 the breeze. The water, which is often four to five feet deep,* even 

 in the paths, if paths they may be called, which are selected by your 

 guide, is coloured a dark reddish brown by the quantity of tannin 

 exhaled by the spongy mass of vegetation which everywhere underlies- 

 it. This dark muddy water, silent and motionless save where your 

 party is churning it into something .like frothy beer, is made even 

 more dismal by its perfect reflection of the ghostly desolation overhead. 

 It reproduces with startling vividness the long white trunks of the 

 Cypress trees and the tangled grey hairs of the Spanish moss. Now 

 and again the harsh piping cry of some lonely water-bird accentuates 

 the stillness ; here and there the deadly mocassin coils about the 

 spreading roots, black and grimy with the stagnant water, and adds by 

 its very movement to the uncanny, desperate desolation of it all." 

 The wood of Taxodium disticlmm is light, soft, straight-grained,, 

 easily worked and very durable in contact with the soil. It is 

 largely manufactured into lumber and used for construction, railway- 

 ties, posts, fencing, etc.f The manufacture of Cypress shingle has 

 been greatly on the increa.se for some years past, especially since 

 the supply of timber afforded by the useful Pines has been on the 

 decrease owing to the gradual exhaustion of the forests. The excess 

 of moisture in which it flourishes and its comparatively difficult 

 accessibility have hitherto preserved the deciduous Cypress both from 

 fire and the axe, but the saw-mill is now being established in many 

 districts and the work of destruction is proceeding apace. 



Under cultivation Taxodium distiehum has a tendency to sport in the 

 seed beds, and many varieties have thence at different times been selected 

 and named by horticulturists chiefly in reference to the habit of the 

 plants. J But it is now well known that although the deciduous Cypress 

 in its maturity presents considerable diversity as regards habit, the 

 striking differences observed in young plants gradually diminish with age, 

 and that the trees as they grow older approach more and more nearly to- 

 a general type in which individual differences are too insignificant to call 

 for a separate designation. By far the most distinct of the varieties of 

 Taxodium distiehum is that described above as pendulum. It is a 

 "juvenile" (Jugendform) of American origin which must have been 

 introduced into this country at an early date, as a small tree long since. 

 dead was in the Royal Gardens at Kew in the time of the elder Aiton, 

 but of whose origin nothing was known. It appears to have been first 

 noticed as a native American plant by Xuttall in the early part of the 

 nineteenth century ; it is not uncommon in South Carolina and Florida 

 where it is a smaller tree than the common form. Although a damp 

 soil is the most suitable for it, it thrives in drier ground better than 

 the common form. 



* The depth of water in the southern swamps prevents natural reproduction of the 

 deciduous Cypress ; the seed cannot germinate and there are no young trees, and compara- 

 tively few small ones to replace the old ones. Silva of North America, X. 153. 



t Sargent, Woods of the United States, p. 112. 



London, Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum, IV. 2481, gives the names and description 

 of five of these forms ; Carriere, Traite General des Coniferes, ed. II. 181 185, describes 

 fifteen varieties ; and Beissner, Nadelholzkunde, 152154, has transcribed most of them. 



